Slacklines for Balance and Coordination

Last fall, during the Primitive Core Basic class at our Liberty Hill campus, a student brought along her slackline and set it up as a great way to spend some free time at the end of the day. I had watched people walk on slacklines before, but never really checked it out in seriousness.

A few months later, I happened to see a great slack line video online and was really impressed by what the possibilities are for fitness using a slackline. Jumping, surfing and doing agility tricks was a huge step into a new world from what I had been familiar with in my past understanding of slacklines.

Stretching and Balance

“So what exactly is a slackline, and what’s the purpose?” may be your first question. A slackline is usually a piece of webbing (flat nylon line) either 1″ or 2″ wide, strung between 2 supports, with enough tension on it to allow a person to walk and even jump on it. There are many options to create a slackline, but the easiest, it appeared to me, is to buy a whole “kit” which includes the line, a ratchet system to apply the tension, and a couple of “slings” to put on either support.

I looked around for a while and got some great advice from my aforementioned student (thanks, Kimberly), and the best deal for what I wanted – which was a 2″ line that I could bounce around on – was the surf-line setup from Gibbon which included all of the things I mention above, and has a little better ratchet assembly. So for the price of a modest piece of workout equipment, I now have a slackline set up in my back yard. I don’t like leaving that much tension on my trees, so I relax the tension but leave it up when it’s not being used. It only takes a few seconds to set the tension and workout when I’m ready.

Find a position and hold it

I’ll probably come back around to more cool things to do on this slackline in later posts. For instance, I’ve been experimenting already with jumping off the line and into the trees, or jumping from the trees onto the line. These juniper trees are so awesome for that kind of thing, as the bark is soft and they have branches at such perfect angles. I talk about using trees for fitness in an earlier set of blog posts (part 1 and part 2), in fact, and the Ashe Juniper is my tree of choice in Central TX for such things.

However, before I get WAY beyond my neophyte level on things, I have just been taking the time to get familiar with the line, balancing and doing some beginner moving and jumping. The other day while slowing things down a little and just working on standing and trying to take some steps, I found a really cool way to work on balance and stretch at the same time.

Start from here and then bend into a stretch

I would like to work a lot more on using a slackline along with other standing obstacles in a sort of Parkour or street-running way. In other words, integrating non slackline objects with getting on or off the slackline, or even from slackline, then around a stationary object and ending up back on the slackline. However, before jumping to that advanced of a level, I found a way to work with stationary objects to help increase both balance and flexibility. Standing with one leg one the line and another on a stationary object, move into stretches. Balance before, during and after the stretch. Turn the body and work from different angles, etc. This is only one angle, one stretch. There are dozens of variations just off of this one idea alone.

If you’re interested in this and live in the Central TX area, Kimberly (mentioned above) is hosting a number of different slackline workshops, slackline yoga and free events for kids and adults – all at some parks in the Austin area, throughout the first few weeks of December, 2011. Here are some links on Facebook to these events: